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The first weapons ever designed solely to kill other people were iron.

brass looks nicer against red.

 ThePrimordial wrote:
The first weapons ever designed solely to kill other people were iron.

Nope ... not even close. Iron is a fairly recent useful material. Iron is strong but steel is better, the idea for steel came from bronze and brass. These were made from alloying copper, which reigned supreme for like 1,600 years IIRC. The first weapons designed to solely to kill humans was more than likely stone, which is very brittle.

Brass was the first metal to be used for tools and weapons. Before that it was all wood and stone (and paleolithic and neolithic societies did wage war at an impressive scale). Brass is a metal that doesn't corrod like steel or iron or copper. It's much like gold expect much lighter and harder (it's still a rather soft metal though). Blood is rich in salt and minerals that rust blades very fast. If you are the blood god and don't want to spend your days ioling your weapons and still see them rust away, you will have to use brass even if it's a relatively poor material comparatively speaking (your body won't see the difference, no matter how tought you are, you are not tougher than brass weapons). Plus, it's shine is rather nice. It's why it was used for the hilt of many swords and sabres beside it's none rusting capacity.

Summerians in 3500 BC were using brass and copper no iron in sight for a long time.

 OIIIIIIO wrote:

 ThePrimordial wrote:
The first weapons ever designed solely to kill other people were iron.

Nope ... not even close. Iron is a fairly recent useful material. Iron is strong but steel is better, the idea for steel came from bronze and brass. These were made from alloying copper, which reigned supreme for like 1,600 years IIRC. The first weapons designed to solely to kill humans was more than likely stone, which is very brittle.

Ah, but what is the riddle of steel?

And what is best in life?

I think the first designed weapon would probably be a sharpened bone or stick, stone if we're feeling generous, not iron or brass.

don't forget flint! Sharper than any man made razor!

The first 'weapon' was either a wooden stick or a stone, most likely. Don't forget that a plain stone becomes a weapon the moment a person picks it up to try to kill something.

Apparently Obsidian cuts well.............

Fiction often claims blood tastes like copper. Brass is essentially an alloy to harden copper for use it in ornamentation or even weaponry?

... since the Necrons predate anything Humanity has ever done, it's not the function of it in weapons that makes brass a color favored by Khorne. It's most likely because it looks good against a red and/or black background.

We already have a golden throne, why not a brass one?

 Psienesis wrote:
... since the Necrons predate anything Humanity has ever done, it's not the function of it in weapons that makes brass a color favored by Khorne. It's most likely because it looks good against a red and/or black background.

IIRC, don't the Necrons also predate the Chaos Gods themselves, and so have little/no influence on their formation at all? A lot of the fluff talks about how they draw from sentient emotion, and a big play is made of how a great many of the mortal servants of Chaos are human - and so the larger portion of the emotion that the Gods feed on is human, too, I would have thought. Hence why they seem to reflect human stuff.

I mean there's also the fact that Khorne the fictional construct was written by authors, and they may have liked the idea of the Blood God favouring one of the earliest metals used for weapons. Here, I think the author's intent is a much bigger factor than any in-universe explanation.

Balls. Brass Balls.

Guys, guys... The reason Khorne loves brass...


...is because it's so metal.

What is all this reasoning of practicality of brass.

Brass has bra and ass in it, the big dawg loves some brass.

 unmercifulconker wrote:
What is all this reasoning of practicality of brass.

Brass has bra and ass in it, the big dawg loves some brass.

And just like that, we have our answer.

thanks for coming out, everyone!

Some posters are confusing brass with bronze.

Bronze was an orange-ish alloy of copper and (usually) tin. Bronze was tougher and harder than pure copper. It was used extensively for tools, weapons and armor in the (surprise!) Bronze Age.

Bronze is actually harder than iron, but it requires trade to create because tin and copper deposits rarely occur together. Iron deposits are generally easier to find than copper and tin. Iron can also be worked soft and tempered at the end of the forging/smithing process, which is very attractive when crating complex shapes that hold an edge/point.

Actual brass is a yellowish alloy of copper and zinc. It's more malleable (meaning it deforms under compressive stress; it can be beaten into new shapes) than bronze, which makes it less suitable for weapons and armor. Brass is primarily used for decoration, musical instruments and nautical applications because it resists corrosion.

Because of the variable composition of bronze there is some overlap with brass, but real brass isn't commonly used for weaponry.

So yeah, yellow looks better with red than orange does. And there are steampunk influences at work. And 'brass' sounds sharper and harsher than 'bronze' in English. Artistic license is artistic.

My two teef.